Sean Ammirati joined Birchmere Ventures in 2012 to as the partner leading Birchmere Labs, a seed and studio fund focused on community driven commerce start-ups. Prior to that, he had over 12 years founding, building and selling businesses in the media and software industries. Sean was previously Chief Operating Officer of ReadWriteWeb, one of the most influential sites about the future of technology and innovation. In December 2011, the company was acquired by SAY Media to strengthen its technology channel. Sean was previously co-founder and CEO of mSpoke, which was the first acquisition of LinkedIn.
Sean is currently an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University. He also was a founding advisor to Innovation Works’ AlphaLab accelerator. He holds a B.S. in computer information systems from Grove City College and was a research fellow at Carnegie Mellon’s Sloan Software Industry Center.
Check out his new book about how lean startups can find growth; The Science of Growth: How Facebook Beat Friendster--and How Nine Other Startups Left the Rest in the Dust
Sean’s Challenge; We need to do a better job conditioning ourselves to understand that failure is not as scary as we tend to think it is.
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If you liked this interview, check out episode 16 with Zach Malone where we discuss raising venture capital and the Pittsburgh startups scene.